SmartTranscript of House General - 2025-02-07 - 1PM

[Chair Marc Mihaly ]: Wonderful. Good afternoon. This is Friday, February seventh, and the general housing committee. Did I just say January? It's February seventh. And we have Kevin Choo with us. So and this is the first time you've been in our committee, so I think we're gonna go around, introduce ourselves, and then let you take the lead. [Ashley Bartley ]: Great. [Emilie Krasnow ]: Hello. Emily Crossdall, Chittenden and I in South Burlington. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Hi. I'm Elizabeth Burrows. I represent Windsor one, which is Heartland West Windsor of Windsor. [Ashley Bartley ]: Elizabeth. Gail [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: Peso. I've represented Chittenden twenty, Colchester. Thank you. [Tom Charlton ]: Tom Charlton, Athens, Grafton, Chester, England. Joe Parsons, Newberry, Thompson, and Grott. [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: Ashley Bartley, Fairfax in Georgia, and then the rest of our committee members will be here hopefully shortly. [Ashley Bartley ]: Great. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Take it away. [Kevin Choo ]: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. My name is Kevin Choo. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Futures Project. There was a copy of the economic action plan that you may have found in your mailboxes. If you haven't, I brought some hard copies that I can distribute. So that'll be the focus of my testimony today. The the Futures Project launched this plan just last Tuesday, and it's, an opportunity to discuss the work of a Futures Project up to the point of launch, but also what comes next. And it's all in pursuit of answering this mission question, which is how can we use data to support the evolution of Vermont's economy towards a thriving future full of opportunity for all. So a little bit more background information on the FUTURES project itself. We're a five zero one c three nonprofit. We're a nonpartisan organization focused on economic research and education. So that's that's my role today is to give you some information that hopefully you find helpful. And I'll dive into the contents of the plan with the presentation today. Over the past two years, I've had the privilege of traveling around the state, speaking with many, many Vermonters. In total, I connected with over five thousand Vermonters across coffee conversations, public presentations, Zoom calls. You name it, I probably did it. And the themes that you see up here are the themes that emerge from that process of public engagement. None of these words or phrases will likely come as a surprise. These are the things on the minds of Vermonters. Not only the challenges of today, but I also asked what are their hopes, dreams, and ambitions for the future. Right? Because this is very much a future focused plan. How do we address the root causes from the challenges that we're facing? So the economic action plan has set some long term aspirational goals focused in these two frameworks, people and places. Vermont's future depends on people and places. Specifically, we outline expansion strategies and efficiency strategies. So within the people framework, that's focused on closing the workforce gap, growing our working age population. It's not enough to to just say we have a workforce shortage, but we need to know how many people do we need to close that gap. So we set a target of eight hundred and two thousand by twenty thirty five, and I'll get into the calculation behind how we pick that number. It wasn't just for the area code. And then in terms of efficiency strategies, it's how do we do more of what we have? How do we get people back into the workforce? In the places framework, we focus on housing, increasing our housing stock to three hundred fifty thousand non seasonal units by twenty thirty five. That's an increase of about seventy thousand. And in order to do that effectively and efficiently, we also need to look at what are the barriers that are slowing down housing. So those are the long term targets. I'll get into some details with data about how we calculated them and the recommendations for what the heck we do about it. This is really about connecting the dots. Right? The challenges that are voiced by Vermonters, things like workforce, housing, health care, education, childcare, the affordability crisis, these are symptoms. These are the symptoms of decades of stagnation, and the root cause of these symptoms are people and places, specifically our demographics and the housing scarcity. And let's take a look at the people framework first and dive into demographics. So this is Vermont's age distribution from the year two thousand. In the year two thousand, we had about two hundred twenty six thousand Vermonters between the ages of twenty five to forty nine. And in that same year, we had about seventy seven thousand five hundred Vermonters, sixty five plus. What you'll notice is there was a robust workforce, robust tax base relative to the number of children and elderly. That was twenty five years ago. The picture looks very different today. So Vermont right now has fewer than two hundred thousand Vermonters between the ages of twenty five to forty nine. That's a shrinking workforce. That's a shrinking tax base. And they're being asked to shoulder a greater burden because there are many more Vermonters over sixty five now. That number has nearly doubled. And in terms of how we balance that long term, Vermont has the lowest fertility rate of any state in the country. That means our homegrown talent supply is dwindling. So let's take a look at how demographics then impacts the labor force. Over the past decade, we've seen a drastic shift in the ratio of job seekers to job openings. A decade ago, there were about two job seekers for every one open job in Vermont. There were more people looking for work than work available. Today, it's an inverted ratio. So for every one job seeker, there's about two open jobs. That's the workforce shortage. So this is a look back over the past decade. What does it look like over the next decade? That's what this plan tries to answer. The gap is about thirteen thousand five hundred people annually that Vermont should be trying to add into its workforce. Some of that can come from people who are already here. Right? We talk about efficiency strategies, increasing labor force participation, but we also need expansion. We also have to be able to attract and retain more young talent to the state. This gap is driven by demographics. So seventeen thousand one hundred fifty retirements per year. That's the estimate from the Vermont Department of Labor. To contextualize that number, there are only about five thousand three hundred total twelfth grade students in the state of Vermont. So when I say we don't have enough homegrown talent, that's what I mean. We could increase retention of our high school students, of our college graduates to near one hundred percent and we would still need some level of net inbound migration, whether that's domestic migration or international, to balance this equation. When we overlay labor force and population, here's the picture that we get. So labor force is represented in green and the overall population by different age cohorts is the blue bar behind it. So when I say efficiency and expansion, what I mean is we can only increase efficiency to the extent that we have people in a given age cohort. Many working age Vermonters are participating in the labor force, but the drop in the overall rate, again, is demographically driven. So let's take a look at some of the strategies that are outlined in this economic plan. First of all, look at the expansion strategies. So the overall takeaway here is how do we get more people both interested in moving to Vermont and staying here once they get here? This is just a sampling of some of the strategies that you'll find in the plan. There are likely other ideas that we need to be adding to this list, but we all have to be rowing in the same direction of trying to grow our working age population. So for each of these topics, you'll see some detailed information for ways that we can make progress. But it's not just about telling Vermont's story beyond our borders. It's also about telling the story to Vermonters, to ourselves. That's the in reach strategy. We need to be able to demonstrate how growth can also benefit Vermonters who aren't here, how growth can broaden the tax base and improve affordability. Efficiency strategies focus on education to employment alignment, making sure that the opportunities that kids in our schools or students in our colleges or even adults accessing training, making sure those opportunities are aligned with the labor market opportunities of today and also for the future. Right? We know that skills are rapidly changing. Technology is evolving, and we need to have adaptable curricula to meet those changing needs. We need to strengthen the business climate so that Vermont businesses can create the types of new opportunities that match what people are looking for. People are willing to move and relocate if there's economic opportunity. I I know that very well because my parents did that. They immigrated from Southeast China back in nineteen eighty six, left behind everything they knew, and took a chance, a brave leap of faith, to come to the United States. Ended up in Vermont, of all places. And they were able to find opportunity here. They raised three boys, put them through college. They were able to buy a home. So this work is really meant to make sure that opportunity continues to be part of the Vermont narrative, not just today, but moving forward too. We can do a lot more to address some of the barriers that Vermonters face to access employment. There are about seventy one thousand Vermonters between the ages of sixteen to sixty four who are not participating in the labor market and not seeking work actively. Some of the barriers are listed here on the screen and, again, addressed in detail in the plan itself. So connecting the dots. We just examined the people framework, took a look at demographics, the impact on the labor market. And I said, if we can grow the working age population, then it can also benefit Vermonters. But in order to realize that vision, we need to have the physical capacity in our housing market in order to support that relocation. Otherwise, with the conditions of scarcity that we have, more people here can exacerbate some of the difficult housing market dynamics that we're seeing. So we have to be able to pursue both the people strategies and places strategies in tandem. They're complementary. When we take a look at Vermont's housing stock by decade, we can see that Vermont has some of the oldest housing stock in the country. About a quarter of the homes were built before nineteen forty, pre World War two. Vermont used to build new homes at a relatively healthy rate relative to the needs of the population in the seventies and eighties. And in recent decades, we've seen that go the other way. New housing construction has decelerated to the point that less than twenty percent of Vermont's housing stock has been built in the past twenty years. Efficiency strategies need to focus on being able to streamline some of the rules and regulations and processes that have caused this deceleration. That means examining zoning, building code, simplifying permitting processes, taking a look at at appeals processes. But beyond those process and policy related strategies, we can also look to the untapped potential that already exists in our communities as another way to increase efficiency. And that's where tapping into latent capacity and revitalizing communities should be part of this overall strategy. What do you mean by latent capacity? The Futures Project conducted a study last year to examine historical peak population compared to current population on a town by town basis all across the stage. And what we found, and this probably comes as no surprise, is many places in Vermont have depopulated. There are fewer people today than there were in the past. So all the areas that are blue and green on this map have fewer people today than they used to. Now if we just said, what if we restore every town in Vermont back to its historical peak? We would have over seventy thousand Vermonters just by doing that. So population growth in aggregate across the state can be part of a rural revitalization strategy too. [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: Yes. Thank you. So did different regions have different points in time of reaching their peak? So you're matching it to different so, like, all of these different peaks. [Kevin Choo ]: That's right. Yeah. All the way back to the eighteen hundreds. That's what I had available in terms of census data. [Ashley Bartley ]: Okay. [Kevin Choo ]: The areas that are lighter shaded on this map are near or at historical peaks, whereas other towns, the peak may have been in the mid nineteen hundreds, might have been early nineteen hundreds. But this was inspired by some commentary that said Vermont doesn't have the carrying capacity for population growth. And I thought it was an interesting phrase, which is why it inspired some data informed research to just examine what do we mean by carrying capacity because there are towns that have capacity. They used to be larger. If your town used to have five thousand people and it has twenty five hundred now, there were likely roads and infrastructure and homes built for five thousand people. How can we tap into some of that as part of a long term plan? [Ashley Bartley ]: Is the I'm Mark Mahomes. Badly. Sorry. I was late. Is what is the what is the physical manifestation of that latent capacity? Is it vacant homes or homes that have one person or two people living room and used to have five? Is it you know, what assuming that the roads the roads don't change, they're there, etcetera, but how does one see and what's more does one see this capacity? Unless they're washed out. Yes. [Kevin Choo ]: You make a great point, which is latent capacity is sort of this broad analysis. And on a town by town scale, there's likely quite a bit of variability. Some of it is related to demographics. Predictably, as the population ages, medium household size goes down. There are empty bedrooms in homes that are occupied by just one or two people. That's part of latent capacity. In other regions, there may be vacant homes that are unoccupied that might not be fit for occupation and need revitalization to get it to the point where those units can come back online and be part of the housing stock. I would say that a further stage of research, and this will likely, to me, be [Elizabeth Burrows ]: a [Kevin Choo ]: better locally driven effort, is to start examining, okay, what is in a single town's latent capacity? Is it mostly vacant? Is it empty bedrooms? Because then the strategies at the local level can follow where the data say we should go. But in order [Ashley Bartley ]: to tap [Kevin Choo ]: into some of this, especially with the aging population and those empty bedrooms with median household size going down, if the older Vermonters who are occupying those larger homes have nothing to move into, nothing to downsize into, then we don't have enough healthy mobility to effectively use the housing stock we already have. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Elizabeth? Thank you. In your opinion, will massive school closure help in migration into the state of Vermont? [Kevin Choo ]: In my opinion, we so I'm gonna start with some data. I also did, an adjacent study on latent capacity that looked at enrollment capacity just over the past twenty years based off of publicly available data from the agency of education. And we used to have about a hundred thousand kids in our k twelve system, and that is down to about eighty thousand now. So twenty thousand reduction in about twenty years. So there's latent capacity in some of our schools. I think that if a community lost a school or lost a hospital, some of these anchor institutions would be a harder sell for attracting someone to relocate to Vermont. So population growth and restoring and tapping into this latent capacity can use some of the existing enrollment capacity in schools too. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: But, I mean, reasonably speaking. I mean, we're I understand your data. We've all heard that data before. But is it reasonable to expect families to move to a massive number of towns where there are no schools? [Kevin Choo ]: I think for families, it's a harder proposition. When we take a look at data from twenty twenty to twenty twenty three for the age segment of twenty five to forty four year olds. There is actually a lot of national movement to rural areas. I think some of that was catalyzed by the conditions of the pandemic. There was movement to away from larger cities, and remote work certainly increased at a really rapid rate during the pandemic. If it's one individual or maybe two adults with no kids, it might be easier to say yes to a place where there's no school. It's likely harder for a family to do that. So there there's variability. The reasons why someone might relocate is many, many factors. School certainly plays a big role for families in that equation, but there are others that might say yes to a community even if it didn't have us. [Ashley Bartley ]: So let's go ahead. Keep going. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Thank you. I have several questions if that's a I mean, not ten or anything, but Okay. We have seen and I don't know where your data about this is, but we have seen a massive purchase of our vacant homes going to second homeowners. In according to the data that you've gathered from your listening tour, What is the conversion rate of second homeowners to retirees, and how does that affect our ability to like, the clogging up of vacant homes to second homeowners then being converted to retirees. How does that affect the possibility [Ashley Bartley ]: of in migration? Yeah. I don't have that number off the top [Kevin Choo ]: of my head, but I can follow-up with some data from the Census Bureau to take a look at those estimates of primary, secondary homes, seasonal, vacant homes. So I'll I'll share that with you as a follow-up. The underlying challenge is housing scarcity. So if we are seeing conversion and it's taking away from the scarce housing stock that we have, then it certainly makes it less likely that perhaps a working family can move to Vermont or a working family that's currently in Vermont stay in Vermont. We have to address the underlying scarcity, but, fundamentally, someone moving to Vermont is not a bad thing. It helps to increase our population and increase the tax base. We just have to be able to create the physical capacity for that in migration to be beneficial to Vermont. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Well, but also, I mean, we all know that our our economy is largely service based. And so when drawing a line all the way through, when we have people purchase second homes so that families are not able to move in and those become retirees, and those retirees require more services as people do as they age. How are we going to account for that in what we want from our in migration? [Kevin Choo ]: Yeah. I I think we need to be able to build new housing that meets the needs of the demographic that we're trying to attract. Right? So I do some coaching at Middlebury College, and I used to work at the University of Vermont. Actually, Mark, that's where I first met you, Rubenstein School. And one of the things that I've talked to young people about is what is it that would keep them here in Vermont? What are the types of opportunities they're looking for? What's the type of housing that they need? And if you take a look at Vermont's distribution of single family homes to multifamily homes, We have a lot of large homes that might be a good fit for a family, a young family, or it might be desirable by someone looking for a second home. We don't really have a lot that meets the needs of the young twenty year olds or early thirty year olds. I I spoke with some students who said to me, you know, I I don't mind a small shoebox apartment as long as it's a place of my own. And if we can design the built environment to meet the needs of the demographic that we're trying to attract, I don't think that a small downtown apartment is necessarily the target of someone seeking a second home. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: So do you have a particular demographic demographic of who we are trying to attract? [Kevin Choo ]: Yep. When we go back to the demographic distribution, we need to be attracting many, many more in that darker green color, that twenty five to forty nine age group. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Unironically, that is also the prime childbearing years. So would you equate that to trying to attract more families? [Kevin Choo ]: It's a yes and. We we have to do both. We have to have options for growing families. We have to have options for people that maybe haven't found a partner yet. And as people age and their family situation change, housing needs change. But when we take a look at the distribution of the housing types that we have in Vermont, we built a lot of homes in the seventies and eighties when the median household size is larger. So our built environment met the needs of families at that time. It hasn't changed enough in recent decades to meet the needs of our population as those needs have changed. [Ashley Bartley ]: Small small units also give they help with families because it gives, the older people a place to go that's reasonable. Leave us the large house they have goes back on the market. So it's it's a lot to be said for a mix of units, but a lot of smaller units would help. [Kevin Choo ]: That's right. [Ashley Bartley ]: Well, are there additional questions for Just to follow-up on on, [Tom Charlton ]: a question you asked. Okay. Sorry. [Ashley Bartley ]: We're we're looking to build [Tom Charlton ]: a workforce including rural areas. Mhmm. We're looking at investing in housing statewide including rural areas. Is there somewhere that you where would you go to to find data maybe from the realtors association as to how important is it to people relocating Vermont to be close to their schools? Because we if we consolidate a lot of schools, there are little communities in between that are not gonna be, I suspect, as attractive to the people we wanna bring into the states. So do we have do you have any data indicating what the people we're looking for want with regard to, you know, how high on that list of approximately the schools? [Kevin Choo ]: I know the treasurer's office released a study or a report about state to state migration flows. And in that report, it lists the reasons from the US Census Bureau that people state for why they relocate. I don't remember that list off the top of my head in terms of what ranked where, but, certainly, I can follow-up to share that data with you. [Emilie Krasnow ]: Yeah. Not a question, but I have been a long admirer of your work and I think as you know. And, a lot of the data that you've done over the last years has inspired some legislation that I've worked on. And so I really appreciate you bringing that data here. And I know that there are a lot of people in my generation who want to stay in Vermont and come to Vermont, and we need all sorts of opportunities. And I just really appreciate your work, and I know that you also go into communities. I know you spoke recently. I couldn't attend because I was here at our South Burlington Rotary. So I appreciate the effort of going into communities and bringing them the information. So I look forward to continuing to follow the work that you do, and I think anecdotes are are great, but data really drives policymaking in the best way it can. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: So I appreciate you. Thank you. [Ashley Bartley ]: Thanks, Carlos. Noah? [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: Hi. So I share the sort of family immigration history that that you just identified, and I'm trying to constantly highlight the need to promote immigration. And I think that we have we have ready data to show how I just wanted to to see whether you have maybe I missed it, but could you highlight for us somewhere that shows the effects of the recent waves of immigrants who are and and how to best meet that moment and how that could benefit us, and how do we avoid pitfalls to to make sure that we're attracting, retaining, nurturing? [Kevin Choo ]: Sure. It's not in this presentation, but it is in the economic protection plan. Again, I have extra hard copies that I can distribute if needed. We take a look at the economic impacts of immigration, and the data show that, immigrate immigrant communities in Vermont are positively contributing to our economy. Yes. They use services, but so does everyone else in our, society. But the net impact is they contribute more in taxes and income and their spending than they're using in services. The data are in the plan. Good. Thanks. Kevin, go ahead. We we're just about out of time, but one more. [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: I don't really have a question, but I noticed that that previous slide shows a street and buildings, and I believe that is Center Street in Rutland. This one? Yeah. Center Eye Eye. [Ashley Bartley ]: Yeah. That that's very photo to me. That's [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: where you see it. That's gorgeous. [Ashley Bartley ]: A seven I I I can't I know I would like a hard copy. Yes. Do you have them with you? [Kevin Choo ]: I do. [Ashley Bartley ]: I'll just Anyone else on the committee would like a hard copy? One, two, three. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: So you put it in [Elizabeth Burrows ]: your mailbox. [Kevin Choo ]: They're in your mailbox. Oh, okay. [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: Yeah. Alright. Great. I did see you in the mailbox. Yeah. [Kevin Choo ]: I can make a few concluding remarks as we wrap up here. So in terms of our housing needs, right, there was a statewide housing needs assessment. And when we take a look at what that rate is, we're nowhere close. So you need to be building seven to eight thousand homes per year, and we're only building about twenty five hundred. Right? And when we examine that word permits, we can think about it as permission, allow. That's how many we allow even though we we say we need significantly more. So this plan is really meant to address affordability and abundance. Vermont's future, it's a choice that we get to make. Do we choose a scarcity pathway or do we choose an abundance pathway? Pathway? Hitting those long term targets would only require two percent growth annually. That changes the conversation when we say, okay. If you live in a town of a thousand people, how do you welcome twenty new residents next year? That's two percent growth. So if we can get collective buy in towards that, the aggregation of those small efforts on a local basis leads to transformative change at the state scale. And we if you get to pick, we're here in the intersection of the blue and the green. Right? High cost of living. This has been major topic that every Vermonter has honed in on. So how do we increase affordability? We can either grow the population, increase housing, or the other pathway is a scarcity one. Those conversations are playing out in our community. School consolidation, hospital closures, transportation cuts. We get to pick. This plan says let's pick abundance. Thank you. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Thank you. Thank you. [Ashley Bartley ]: Thank you very much, Kevin. Thank you. Alright. So, Kevin, we're gonna move on, but thank you very much. And I everyone needs to check their mailbox if if we get [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Well, Robert, where did the slides come in? [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: The slides are the same thing as that. These are in in the plan. Okay. [Ashley Bartley ]: Are we're going to move on at this point to intro introduce to Bill h one zero six and h four two. Both happen to be sponsored by representative Tom Stevens I'm sorry. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Who is I see. [Ashley Bartley ]: Very familiar with Casey Williams. [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: I wanna [Ashley Bartley ]: please remember to take the committee via the two bills. We are introducing them at this point, and we'll at a later point, assuming they come off the wall, we will be taking testimony. Today is the introduction of the bill. Sure. So shall we start with h one zero six? It's shorter. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: Thanks for having me and representative Tom Stevens from Washington Chittenden. And so this first bill, committee members who were on the committee last year should remember this bill. This is fixing something that happened with the the flood disclosure bill that we passed last year. It was we did that in coordination with the representative from the Realtors Association, and it was a it was a response to, kind of what's been happening with flood disclosure, just in our flooding. Letting people know letting buyers know under certain circumstances that the house that they're looking at to purchase had been involved in a flood and whether it had been flooded itself or whether the property had been flooded. And we made some assumptions when we passed the bill that, in particular, that there were part of the process would be that this whether this house sat in a flood zone would be reflected in FEMA maps for each of the towns. And as it turns out, not every town has FEMA map that's up to date or they may not have proper mapping. And we had put in some, not so much enforcement, but what would happen if you did not disclose. And not long after July one passed and the bill, went into effect, I received a phone call from the representative from the Vermont Realtors Association saying, pointing out that not every town has a FEMA map. What do we do about that? We're putting a we're putting something on top of a seller in particular that they may not be able to do simply because there are no maps in that particular municipality. And so this bill is it's not a simple bill, actually, but it does take away the in it does take away the requirement that the seller provides access to the map that shows that their house is in that and that's certainly more information that you can get from the realtors association. But it's to make sure that people don't get caught being fined for something that they can't do. [Ashley Bartley ]: Thank you. So this is a matter we we will dive into further retake test monthly. I've I've had conversations with the realtors association, so we'll just [Representative Tom Stevens ]: And the bankers association is also will also be of benefit to this. I mean, the balance for the balance for us when we passed the bill was to make sure that potential buyers were not buying. It's caveat emptor. Right? [Ashley Bartley ]: I mean Right. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: So that that in this particular case that they would have been informed and and the goal is to retain that because it is something that I believe with the way that the realtors put it was if they know something, if they know a material fact, they have to represent that. And this was a case where it actually was stretching. The intent last year was to make it law rather than just sort of a professional requirement and also taking into account the next number of homes are being sold without realtors. And so they weren't subject to letting people know. And so trying to find a balance between, at least in the communities where there are maps, how we get to a total coverage may not be as easy because if there are no maps, then how does that work? And that's where the information from both of the witnesses that we heard from last year will be very helpful, I would think. [Ashley Bartley ]: That would be helpful. Among other things, I'll be curious to know what all the policies for banks tell them already and don't tell them, but we will take evidence. We'll take testimony on this. Are there any questions of Tom now given that we are gonna take testimony on this at a future time if we we take it [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: off the ball? Yes. I'm curious whether has there ever been any proposal to ensure that these maps do exist statewide for two hundred fifty one? [Representative Tom Stevens ]: There are different ways of mapping. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Yep. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: How FEMA has chosen to map, I mean, it takes a long time, and it's not universally smooth. And, you know, the process of approving a new map, so using Waterbury as an example from twenty eleven, twenty twelve, we have a we still have a map up on one of our in our library wall of what the FEMA map was for twenty eleven in Waterbury, and the flooding in Waterbury actually matched almost exactly what the twenty eleven map showed or or the map that was in that was considered current that's and and the proposed and then a new map was proposed because it was actually it was actually been flood beyond the hundred year flood mark. And I'm not sure we ever approved it or I'm not sure the feds ever approved it. And so the the FEMA process is very, if not consistent. There are other mapping services that are available to banks or to organizations. They operate differently. They're not readily available to individual consumers. So that's just something that again, that's information you can glean from the people who who contract for those services, but it is not easy for individuals to get to have a map that's considered official. [Ashley Bartley ]: The original bill, as I understand it, the law as we passed it, put the obligation on the seller, not the seller's realtor. Correct? It was a it was an obligation that was for the seller. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: Ultimately. Yeah. [Ashley Bartley ]: Yeah. And the bill the proposed bill takes out the FEMA MAC requirement, but there's still an obligation there are certain obligations on the seller in the in the bill. Right? Yep. Any other questions of Tom on this bill? Well, Tom, now you are the last thing that stands between this committee and the weekend. [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: No pressure on pressure on [Ashley Bartley ]: pressure on the weekend. No pressure [Elizabeth Burrows ]: on the weekend. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: No. I'd like to see. I I'd like to thank you for not inserting, and we're gonna take a ten minute break. [Ashley Bartley ]: We're talking about h forty two and act relating to the creation of the housing board of appeals. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: Yes. So h forty two is exactly that. It is based upon what New Hampshire has been doing now for the last couple of years, and this committee took testimony last year. It didn't go very far because because it's pretty complex, and it is so what it does is it creates a board of appeals for housing zoning decisions. And at essence, what it does is it it allows for so if you have a project that is put forward to your local DRB or your local zoning committees or it's you can if you are approved, the process is that that board that can be appealed. And that could be appealed. And that could be appealed. And most recently, we just saw that there was a, low of affordable housing project in Putney that has been lingering for four or five years, and it's been to the Supreme Court twice on measures that are whatever the reasons were, they delayed a project, made it more expensive. And if we do have a housing crisis, especially with low, you know, affordable housing, this process which exists is fairly long and can be long and laborious. The the manner of thinking behind this is if the locals have already approved the building permits, How far do you go with appeals? And this allows, someone who doesn't agree with the project to go to court and just do it the same way that it's been done or to engage with a zone a a new zoning board of appeals would be a quasi judicial board. And it the way that the New Hampshire processes is that they settle their issues within a hundred and eighty days. It's ran into and upon introduction last year and and a little bit of testimony, there was opposition from the judiciary when they testified because the core issue of the judiciary is everybody should have their day in court, and everybody should have access to to justice or what have you. When things go wrong or when the when the process may be used or overused or abused, projects don't get done. And so this is this would, put into place a six month no more than six month process of of having a zoning board of appeals look at the case and try to, adjudicate it in a way that is a lot more expeditious than what's possible or what happens today. So this was something, again, that we talked about a little bit last year. It has been so far as I know, at least in practice, successful in New Hampshire. But it's still fairly new, and there are people in New Hampshire who don't particularly agree with it. Most people who are involved in the in the judiciary, and I'm not downplaying the importance of their their opinions. But in this particular case, much like what we hear about a lot of the court courts were already backed up before COVID. Courts are still extremely backed up after COVID, including, you will hear in this committee, if you haven't already, how difficult it is and how long it takes to evict people. And some of that is process. Some of that is, you know, access to justice. Clearly, when there's conflict and things have to go to court, the goal the goal of our process that we passed last year or last biennium about having upstream eviction prevention is trying to make sure that if there are eviction, that you cut back on eviction. But this is different. This is the building part of it. This is for the building part of it, and the same things exist that there's a backup in the court system. There are processes that kinda go against the sense of what's local control. If the locals have already approved these projects, why why is it why does it take so long to then go through a process, especially for people who are not interested in having that project in their neighborhood? It's not shutting down access to the judiciary. It is just creating a board that people can go to if they want to try to have a smoother and faster way of solving any disputes that they come up for, you know, for this to find out if the original Sony decisions are still good. [Ashley Bartley ]: Questions? Yeah. Okay. [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: No. You I always go. You go first. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: In your vision of this board, is it in a is there a ruling appealable? Their ruling would I don't you'd have I have to go back into I believe that the point of the of this is that it wouldn't be a period. [Ashley Bartley ]: It's fine. Yeah. It would be fine. [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: Go ahead, if you want. Yes. I I guess I was just trying to figure out this seems, like, at least fiscally, a lot more feasible than some of the ideas that we've generated in here with having a full judiciary expansion. Right? But I I feel like point, I'm [Ashley Bartley ]: I don't know. I mean, you know, I mean, I think we'll have to we'll have to get further into appeals. But I think any clarifying questions you wanna ask of Tom about what's in the legislation is good even if he doesn't remember. Yeah. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: Well, it's I [Chair Marc Mihaly ]: mean, it's [Representative Tom Stevens ]: And then you'll get a walk if you take this further, you'll obviously get the walk through from it and and you have the resources and the not and then through the past knowledge of where to go with it and who to talk to eventually. But it's, it it it's just it's the kind of thing again where you don't necessarily see a lot of zoning appeals on individual housing when it's out in not in the in the more dense areas. You you see it obviously where there's infrastructure. That's where we wanna build. And there's a number of reasons why people oppose, and there's gonna there's there's no one blame for what people do and how they oppose a a project, but it does happen. And when it does happen and it does take I mean, there's a project in Woodstock that took ten years to adjudicate. And needless to say, it's a lovely project. And if you go down there and you say, oh my god. Of course, I would wanna live here, you know, and and, not because it's necessarily because it's in Woodstock, but because the development is just really quite nice. We know that that's what happens with most of these projects that get built. They do add to the community. However, people feel like they they have a right and they have right now, they have a right to to continue to do that, to to continue to move the appeals along. But this is an attempt to create a quasi judicial board, which isn't inexpensive. It does go against what some folks in our judiciary and our equally powerful branch of government feel about how these rulings should be made. But if we don't talk about how to shorten the process, at least in the building of housing, and this isn't only about low income housing, this is about any housing that can be that needs to be permitted through the local process. [Kevin Choo ]: I I just have [Ashley Bartley ]: a couple of clarifying questions. Last year, did this legislation leave this committee? It was here. So it never went to to environment, etcetera. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: No. It didn't. It was judiciary or whatever. No. We had we had, judge Zonay testify and someone else from the judiciary testified and, Ben Frost who used to defeat now in Rhode Island, but he used to be the housing person in New Hampshire that was promoting this. So, no, it didn't. It was in the middle of we may have introduced the bill right near right near crossover or what have you, but it was it was clear after a couple of hours of testimony that this isn't that this is going to take some time to talk about, negotiate, figure out what's acceptable to all the different players. And then, yeah, I would assume that that the jury would go to the zoning committee or [Ashley Bartley ]: to the judiciary committee because of of who it affects. Was the you know does the bill contemplate that the review this board undertakes? Is that de novo review where they can take evidence all over again, or is it on the record of whatever the proceeding where the town was? [Representative Tom Stevens ]: I think it shies away from De Novo because De Novo tends to take a lot of time. [Ashley Bartley ]: Yeah. Is the would it replace the review board, the environmental review I don't believe the environmental court? [Representative Tom Stevens ]: No. I don't believe so. I mean, again, people my memory and understanding of this is is that it would allow things to go to court if that's where the the people who are disputing it want to go. [Ashley Bartley ]: Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Mister Stevens representative Stevens. Thank you so much. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: Hey. Thanks for having me. [Ashley Bartley ]: Yeah. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: I know you're all, like, halfway home. [Kevin Choo ]: Yeah. I am. [Ashley Bartley ]: Will be slow today. Halfway home. So well, I'm a hit with slow base. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: I think [Ashley Bartley ]: Just for the [Representative Tom Stevens ]: Am I all set? [Ashley Bartley ]: Yes. Thank you. Thank you. [Emilie Krasnow ]: Thank [Ashley Bartley ]: you. For the committee. And I have not said the a word. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: Oh my god. I'm going down. [Elizabeth Burrows ]: Thanks. For [Ashley Bartley ]: the committee, we are on our next meeting will be Tuesday, and the morning will be the house floor, as it always is on Tuesday, the house floor, public caucuses, and lunch. And then we will have testimony at one PM here on further testimony on manufactured housing. And we will have as we'll have Jason Webster, who is the co owner of Huntington Home. And as well as let's have Nate Ormalari, who's the deputy commissioner of the agency of commerce community development, whom you heard when we had the joint hearing on manufactured housing before, and a fairly early adjournment. That's what's planned. But one o'clock here. Any questions? Yes. [Representative Tom Stevens ]: Just a comment. Our resident sleuth here has answered my question. Answer is yes. It is available to us. So the spring fourth. [Tom Charlton ]: Yes. [Ashley Bartley ]: It is available. Yeah. I'm not surprised. Yeah. Well, there's a lot there. So anyway, thank you everybody for your attention this week, and we

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